Identity rereferencing : the presentation and evaluation of a narrative map for therapeutic practice : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

This study introduces a map for a therapeutic conversation and assesses its effectiveness. The evidence for this proposal is provided by the study reported, in which a number of measures were taken to ascertain whether the therapeutic process promoted useful change in clients with maladaptive assumptive systems (problem narratives), and whether those changes were sustained over time. Nine clients out of a sample of twenty- three responded and all nine respondents reported sustained changes over a period of 6-24 months. Michael White (2007) suggests that Narrative maps are few, but are important so that processes used by clinicians do not become lost, and are at the same time able to be evaluated, assessed and implemented by other professionals. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was taken to analyse the adaptive client narratives that occurred immediately post therapy, and which remained 6 - 24 months later. A number of themes emerged that revealed a spiritual or ‘wairua’ approach to assuming the adaptive narrative, and there was evidence to suggest that a more resourceful state of beingness (adaptive identity) had emerged and evolved as a result this. The themes point to new initiatives for dealing with the problem emerging via the processes of innovative moments and adaptive reframing. The proposed therapeutic map appeared to be successful and empowering for the respondents as they came to understand they have the power to ‘change the meaning they had assigned to the problem issue, without being defined by the problem issue as they were previously’. The individual seems to be able to perceive the problem through the eyes of the all-knowing self (higher self or spiritual self). When the meaning making and reconstruction emerges from within the client in this way, the writer proposes change is both significant and lasting- Identity Re- Referencing. It is not known if the clients who did not respond did so because they did not experience significant change, however the results would suggest that further research is warranted

Deep Multi-view Models for Glitch Classification

Non-cosmic, non-Gaussian disturbances known as "glitches", show up in gravitational-wave data of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or aLIGO. In this paper, we propose a deep multi-view convolutional neural network to classify glitches automatically. The primary purpose of classifying glitches is to understand their characteristics and origin, which facilitates their removal from the data or from the detector entirely. We visualize glitches as spectrograms and leverage the state-of-the-art image classification techniques in our model. The suggested classifier is a multi-view deep neural network that exploits four different views for classification. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model improves the overall accuracy of the classification compared to traditional single view algorithms.Comment: Accepted to the 42nd IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP'17

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Killing in Military Combat: A review of existing literature on serving military and veteran populations

Background: Killing during combat is a unique experience and, for the majority, is limited to military service. For those working with military and veteran populations, it is essential to be able to understand this experience and any psychological ramifications.Purpose: This review provides a synthesis of existing literature, addressing the specific question: what is known about the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and killing in combat? It summarises what is known of the relationship between these variables and the clinical implications of these findings.Method: A search of existing literature was conducted in a systematic manner in 2017 using electronic databases. A critical appraisal tool was used to inform data extraction and guide the literature review.Results: The literature suggests that those who kill during combat are more likely to report symptoms of PTSD; however, disparity exists as to the statistical significance of this relationship. Factors such as gender and victim characteristics may be influencing factors.Conclusion: The impact of killing during combat must be considered when working therapeutically with military and veteran populations. Future research should aim to recruit military participants from different populations and address some of the difficulties with recruitment—ensuring samples are representative and generalisable

Investigating the relationship between guilt and shame proneness and moral injury in veterans that have experienced active deployment

Moral injury accounts for the complexity of symptoms evident in military personnel which go beyond the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. This study sought to investigate the relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events in a sample of British military veterans (n = 104). Participants were recruited through a social media site and completed an online battery of self-report measures. Participants were male (n = 99) and female (n = 5) with a mean age of 47 years. Fifty-one percent of participants achieved scores on a measure of PTSD that would indicate a probable PTSD diagnosis. Results yielded no significant relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events. There was however a significant relationship between PTSD and morally injurious events, accounting for 43% of the variance, with a medium effect size. When working with veterans with PTSD, clinicians need to be assessing for exposure to morally injurious events to tailor interventions successfully. Future research should look to establish an evidence base for psychological interventions for those that have experienced morally injurious events. Closer consideration of contributing factors, such as type of trauma and historical trauma is also needed to develop the construct further

Investigating the relationship between guilt and shame proneness and moral injury in veterans that have experienced active deployment

Moral injury accounts for the complexity of symptoms evident in military personnel which go beyond the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. This study sought to investigate the relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events in a sample of British military veterans (n = 104). Participants were recruited through a social media site and completed an online battery of self-report measures. Participants were male (n = 99) and female (n = 5) with a mean age of 47 years. Fifty-one percent of participants achieved scores on a measure of PTSD that would indicate a probable PTSD diagnosis. Results yielded no significant relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events. There was however a significant relationship between PTSD and morally injurious events, accounting for 43% of the variance, with a medium effect size. When working with veterans with PTSD, clinicians need to be assessing for exposure to morally injurious events to tailor interventions successfully. Future research should look to establish an evidence base for psychological interventions for those that have experienced morally injurious events. Closer consideration of contributing factors, such as type of trauma and historical trauma is also needed to develop the construct further

Linguistic consequences of toing and froing:Factors that modulate narrative development in bilingual returnee children

This longitudinal study examined the development of narrative micro- and macrostructure in Japanese-English bilingual returnee children. Returnees are children of immigrant families who move to a foreign country, spending a significant portion of their formative developmental years in the foreign majority language context before returning to their native language environment. The returnees did a narrative task in both their L1 (Japanese) and L2 (English) immediately upon their return to their native language environment and a year after. The results showed no aggregate significant changes in L1 or L2 micro- and macrostructure over time. However, at the individual level, the degree of maintenance of L2 microstructure was modulated by L2 exposure. That is, children who continued to receive L2 exposure better maintained their English microstructure (i.e. Type-Token Ratio and Verbs per Utterance) despite being re-immersed in the L1 environment. In terms of their Japanese, the age of return to the L1 environment and relative proficiency predicted the development of their Japanese microstructure (i.e. MLU, Fluency, Type-Token Ratio) and macrostructure. Our study is the first to track both languages of bilingual returnee children over time, revealing that different background variables affect the change in returnee children’s L1 and L2 narrative abilities

Reflections on offering a therapeutic creative arts intervention with cult survivors:A collective biography

A new, evidence-based, multimodal, and creative psychological therapy, Arts for the Blues, was piloted with survivors of cultic abuse in a workshop within a conference setting. The five facilitators, who occupied diverse roles and perspectives within the workshop and research project, reflected on heir experiences of introducing this novel intervention to the cult-survivor population. In this underreported territory of using structured, arts-based, psychological therapy with those who have survived cultic abuse, the authors used a process of collective biography to compile a first person, combined narrative based on those reflections. This approach allows for a visceral insight into the dynamics and obstacles encountered, and the counter transference responses of the facilitators. This reflexive process shined a light into aspects of research and practice that were not all visible to the individual researchers previously, with implications for research ethics, psychological therapy, and creative arts within the cult-survivor field

Social tourism and self-efficacy: Exploring links between tourism participation, job-seeking and unemployment

Social tourism is assumed to provide important psychological benefits for economically and socially disadvantaged populations. This study examines empirically whether these individual benefits are associated with socioeconomic benefits to society by focusing on unemployed individuals. Psychological benefits are addressed in terms of self-efficacy, and socioeconomic benefits, in terms of job-search behaviour. Findings from mixed-methods data reveal that holidays create enabling environments, which bring about positive changes in participants’ self-efficacy, contributing to positive effects on their job-search behaviour. Positive effects are also identified with regard to behaviours towards alternative paths to employment, such as volunteering. Given that these behavioural changes comprise major determinants of reemployment, it is suggested that social tourism may hold potential for incorporation into existing unemployment policies

Selective anti-malarial minor groove binders

A set of 31 DNA minor groove binders (MGBs) with diverse structural features relating to both physical chemical properties and DNA binding sequence preference has been evaluated as potential drugs to treat Plasmodium falciparum infections using a chloroquine sensitive strain (3D7) and a chloroquine resistant strain (Dd2) in comparison with human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells as an indicator of mammalian cell toxicity. MGBs with an alkene link between the two N-terminal building blocks were demonstrated to be most active with IC50 values in the range 30–500 nM and therapeutic ratios in the range 10–>500. Many active compounds contained a C-alkylthiazole building block. Active compounds with log D7.4 values of approximately 3 or 7 were identified. Importantly the MGBs tested were essentially equally effective against both chloroquine sensitive and resistant strains. The results show that suitably designed MGBs have the potential for development into clinical candidates for antimalarial drugs effective against resistant strains of Plasmodia